


yet it claps its wings/ wi' a restless faith

by sprx77



Category: Bleach, Naruto
Genre: Animal spirits, Daemons, First Meeting, Flirting, For Want of a Nail, I blame blackkat, It's a bastardized Sentinel/Guide AU y'all, Liberal Misuse of Canon, M/M, One Shot, Spirit Animals, Spirit Guides, Spirit World, Uzushi0 Halloween 2018, Uzushi0 Rarepair Events, fighting as flirting, if we can get that tag going I'll be in awe tbh, life goals wife goals, sometimes you meet cute boys and they're ready to throw down, what if
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-08-16 22:14:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16503725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sprx77/pseuds/sprx77
Summary: Bazz-B escapes death by flinging himself into the unexplored spirit wilds that stretch, infinitely, beyond the Rukongai. He travels for months until he finds civilization again, so far past the known boundaries of the afterlife that he couldn't find his way back if he wanted to. (He doesn't.)The first person he finds out there is good-looking but, more importantly, offers him a good fight.He still has no idea what's up with the damn chicken.





	yet it claps its wings/ wi' a restless faith

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blackkat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/gifts).



> Look, I have no idea. The pairing attacked me out of nowhere. It's Kat's fault for introducing me to Bazz-B. And "shipping Zabuza with people", for that matter.
> 
>  
> 
> [For Halloween Prompt 16, "familiars/daemons/spirit guides"](https://uzushi0.tumblr.com/post/179131008474/event-halloween-2018)

Bazz fingered a device he’d stolen centuries ago, a little white sphere that fit inside a closed fist. He hasn’t had a reason to use it, an ace up his sleeve he absently figured might prove useful one day. He fights; of course he fights, bloody and beaten, getting up time and again until he exhausts his fire and then some. He’s pissed, angrier than he can _ever_ remember being, his loyalty thrown in his face like a child’s toy, like a worthless thing _never_ valued. He chokes on the taste of blood, numb fingers grasping in his pocket.

He’s always been one to burn hot.

Yhwach keeps talking, of course, even after Bazz's his rage and effort prove useless to dissuade the betrayal. Looking up at the man he’s wanted to kill since he was a child, for nearly as long as he can remember, Bazz’s anger burns cold instead.

He _refuses_ to be helpless. Especially before Yhwach.

Steal the transporter, he’d thought, sick to his fucking heart at the backstabbing and dog-eat-dog bullshit that went on in Silbern’s pristine halls. It was a useless experiment, one of the thousand that Askin started only to abandon, left to gather dust in a workshop.

 A neat trick, to feed in spiritual pressure and find yourself transported meters out of the way of an attack. Course, Bazz had never fucking needed it—he burns all the competition away and always has—but he kept it in his pocket for that proverbial rainy day.

Fuck, but he didn’t think it’d happen like this.

Bazz watches his doom come for him and he wants to scream, he bloodies his entire lip and clenches his teeth and waits, waits, _waits_ and then when the flare of it can be missed, dumps everything he has into the transporter.

 _Coward_ , some part of him hisses, furious.

But stronger than that, infinitely angrier, there’s betrayal ripping through his ribs like paper.

The device explodes, of course. It was meant to be used for short distance bursts. Too much raw energy forced through it and it shattered, a glass canon. He’d put _everything_ into it and the canon launched him so far into the infinite wilds of the afterlife that he couldn’t feel a single trace of Yhwach’s massive, traitorous energy.

Fuck it, he thinks, swallowing a kid's bitter desire for revenge and forcing himself to remember how _easy_ Jugram turned on him, how he kept his back turned for a thousand years. Bazz is loyal to a fucking fault, he knew that a century in, and it’s only ever been thrown in his face.

So, gasping and bleeding into a ground that doesn’t feel made of spirit particles, or at least not completely—and what’s up with that?— Bazz flips off a random direction in lieu of his former _master_ and passes the fuck out, determination thick on his tongue.

In the midst of all the injury and bullshit, he doesn’t pay much mind to the burning sensation that licks down his spine.

Three months later, give or take a day or two, he runs into civilization with an overgrown chicken at his side. Or, well, a citizen. Of some sort of civilization. Probably.

The chicken had been there since he woke up in the spirit wilds. It vanishes, sometimes, but just as often reappears at his ankles to _speak_ to him, all blue-head and red-winged and ugly.

The chicken has a goddamned mohawk.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Says the first voice Bazz has heard since he got here, a fuck-off huge sword over visible over one shoulder. “But that’s the ugliest damn spirit guide I’ve ever seen.”

Bazz gives him some leeway on account of he’d started to worry there _weren’t_ any other souls in this corner of the endless expanse of spirit wilds.

“What’s it to you, fucker?” Bazz’s leeway is not setting the guy on fire. He eyes the sword warily. A bit appreciatively, too, if he’s being honest.

“Nothing, just. What’s a bird doing with a mohawk?”

All the goodwill vanishes. He’s maybe a little protective of the idiot chicken.

“Why don’t you come over here and say that, you dusty cunt?” Bazz snarls, but it’s more smile than teeth. He _misses_ being able to fight without nosy assholes breathing down his neck, without Yhwach’s endless overbearing opinion hovering over them, the threat of punishment high enough that no one else would bother.

Bazz’s own mohawk is only just recovering from the _bullshit_ he’d dealt with fighting the Shinigami. As much fun as _letting loose_ had been, for the first time in centuries, that whole Grand Plan ended up a disgrace.

Its been some kind of vacation, wandering around the green—green! Plants! Color!—expanse of the woods, constantly interrupted with streams and rivers and wildflowers, something new every day. And oh, hadn’t that made Bazz's bones _ache_ , at first, feeling every bit of his age when the spite died down and he could finally appreciate the view. The travel. The _freedom._

And just when he’s starting to wish for someone to talk to—other than the chicken, who is surprisingly verbose for such a sarcastic bitch, and the whole, you know, _chicken_ part—lo and behold, a man materializes out of the wilderness. With a big sword.

It says a lot about Bazz's life that he’s immediately suspicious. Good things just don’t happen to him like that. But he’s also learned not to look a good fight in the consequences, and take his pleasure where he can between disasters, so Bazz cracks his neck and flexes his fingers.

The stranger huffs, fingers twitching up to the handle of his sword, and that makes Bazz's heart fucking leap in anticipation. He’s still got a low simmering fury in him, but shit like that can stay for millennia if you let it, and besides—the flame of predatory excitement all but drowns it out.

“You could have just asked for a bout,” Smiles the man, and his teeth are filed. His arm flexes, biceps bulging, and then the beautifully huge sword is swinging free of its holster. Hell the fuck _yes._

“But would you have given it to me, just like that?” It’s an honest question, for all the flirty undertone that slips in, reckless habit. No Sternritter had taken him up on that part, either, more’s the pity—fucking _prudes_ —

“Pretty thing like you?” Questions the man, and Bazz's stomach drops to hear the tone _returned._ “Don’t see how anybody could say no.”

He shrugs, a casual roll of those well-built, bare shoulders, and deep, dusky brown eyes smolder with interest.

Bazz nudges the chicken out of the way.

The chicken, an eerie being that knows him way too well-- and had from the moment he woke up, staring over him with familiar green eyes—steps out of from between them, but doesn’t come close to clearing the blast radius.

It doesn’t disappear, as Bazz half expects it to. He’s yet to find rhyme or reason to the comings and goings, only that it can find him anywhere. (Usually when he least expects it. And usually it materializes right in front of his face, somehow. If his fire didn’t go straight through it, he’d have had roasted bird for dinner on that first day.)

“Come on, come on…” Angeberhähnchen mutters.

Bazz doesn’t know what it’s waiting for. He’s about ready to punt it clear of the area when there's a faint shimmer of something that’s not quite spiritual energy. It’s close enough to register on his radar, barely, but it still feels at least a hop and a skip away from anything he’s ever felt.

Par the fucking course for this place.

Out of the shimmer steps an otter, dry and soft-furred. It’s one of the cute ones, not the ugly grotesque ones. Though Bazz hasn’t had much human company over the centuries, he’d taken about every scouting mission that came his way, just for the fleeting break from “home”. He knows most of the animals of the human world, knows the most common hollow interpretations in Huedo Mundo.

The otter winds around the swordsman’s legs, almost affectionately, eventually straightening to level a long and slow look at Bazz. It’s human huffs in surprise.

“Well, go on then.” His expression does a complicated thing, settling on softly amused as he adds, almost like an afterthought, “Asuga.”

Bazz can’t shake the feeling that it’s for _him_. He doesn’t know why all this is getting to him. The otter tumbles on four surprisingly graceful paws to Angeberhähnchen. Bazz tenses reflexively, suddenly sure he doesn’t want this other creature—spirit guide—touching him, not if it’s as close to the swordsman as the damn chicken is to him. It feels too much, too inappropriate, and after he stretches out every muscle in a hopefully-decent spar, he’s going to demand answers from this handsome stranger.

For now: priorities. He goes to sidestep the otter, out of that instinctual sense of propriety, but it doesn’t seem to care. It walks right past Bazz, passing within his space without a care in the world, and beelines for Angeberhähnchen.  Bazz lets out his held breath.

Yeah, fuck this complicated soul animal shit.

He holds out a hand and his bow forms, slower than he’s used to with the weird not-spirit-not-matter environment. He’d like to know what’s up with that, too, but he was never the mad scientist of the group. He can _wait._

“Crossbow?” Asks the swordsman, who has been hefting a positively massive blade with no real effort for several minutes now. Bazz wets his lips absently before he speaks.

“Yeah.” Usually he’d have more to say but he’s practically shaking with eagerness. It’d be lame as fuck if the swordsman wasn’t just as ready, by the shark-smile look of him. Bazz is who he is.

“Don’t worry,” he adds, because he’s an asshole, too. “You’ll get yours.”

The sword wouldn't be heavy if it were a zanpakuto but it’s _not_. It's only half-spirit, like _everything_ Bazz has encountered here. It might have been _forged_ from some kind of ore; the possibilities are endless. The strain shows in the biceps wielding it. Not a struggle, per se, but the weight of it is clear.

“It’s Zabuza, by the way.” Says the man, cocking a smile more dare than anything. He looks _impatient_ and Bazz doesn’t know what’s going on here, not quite, but the chicken and the otter—Asuga, and Zabuza had said it like a _gift_ offered to him—have fucked off a proper distance. They’re rolling around, some sort of play wrestling and for an odd, hot moment, Bazz is jealous.

He shakes it off.

“Bazz-B.” He says, offering a grin of his own. Half his brain is screaming to chuck the bow and make like the animals—he has the breathtaking image of them rolling around, sweat dripping down Zabuza's arms and Bazz’s cock dripping on his stomach—and he feels a little like he’s going _crazy_.

The freedom must be going to his head. For once in his life he can take what he wants and it’s thrilling.

He’s got all the time in the damn world, and for the first time, he’s only looking forward.

“Well, Bazz.” Zabuza twirls a blade as tall as he is, like it’s nothing. “I hope you’re as fast as you look.”

And then he’s darting forwards, and spirit-steel clashes against spirit-steel, sparks flying with the promise of flame. It’s goddamn perfect.

**Author's Note:**

> Bazz-B's spirit guide is a hoatzin! They're called stinkbirds or skunk birds and the babies are born with claws. Luckily, spirit animals don't have a smell! His name is Angeberhähnchen.
> 
> Zabuza's is a sea otter. Bazz and I agree that sea otters are cute and fluffy; river otters look like how Darwin described marine iguanas. Her name is Asuga.


End file.
